Meet CARE Supporters Greg & Kaycie Hersey
How did you get involved with CARE?
Greg: We’ve been attending Beer & Bites since it first began. We came not only to support Gordon and Traci Rush and Dr. Senecal and their team in fighting an endless battle, but also because we’ve been touched by cancer in our own family.
My sister-in-law had breast cancer and has since been cleared and my father passed away from throat cancer. It was very quick from his diagnosis to death. So we’ve had experiences with it and we’ve lost some good friends to that disease. For us, it’s one of those things that we’ll always be involved with. Having Gordon and Traci be the leaders of that, it’s such an easy thing to get behind.
Kaycie: It’s so important to have people not have to drive to Seattle to get the help they need. CARE puts the South Sound on the map as a place to help people in an innovative way. We’re on the cutting edge of what’s going on in the cancer world.
Greg: Another thing that motivates me is that there are always things where you say you wish you could have helped or you wish you could have been a part of something, but you don’t know where to go or what to do. Or you feel like maybe if you give your donations to a general fund that maybe it won’t hit the mark that you thought it would, so having South Sound CARE be something that is available to people in our area—this is the cancer alliance that I want to be a part of. I know where my money is going, I know whose running it, I know the people behind it. It’s not only the care and the research, and the help that the patients are getting, which is awesome, but it’s an outlet for people who are looking to be a part of this.
As you can see from the growth of the event, who knows where this thing will go, but the bigger the better, I think.
Kaycie: Also, all of the money doesn’t go to administration. The vast majority of the money raised goes to the actual patients.
How is CARE different from other organizations that you support?
Greg: To me, it doesn’t feel like a corporation. The people who are backing it and supporting are amazing. At Beer & Bites this fall, the energy in the room was just incredible. People just couldn’t wait to be a part of this and to donate and hopefully help make someone’s life be better.
Kaycie: I also think having Dr. Senecal get up and speak was huge. The people who are most involved get up and share their stories. That just hits you in your heart.
Greg: At so many big organizations there are so many layers that you don’t even know who is behind it. You go to Beer & Bites and it’s Mary Byrne, Sally Glover, Gordon Rush, Dr. Senecal, and a couple of patients speak. That is South Sound CARE. You don’t have to peel back a bunch of layers to understand what’s happening and what your money is going towards.
For me, it’s a great cause and one of just a couple that we participate in.
Kaycie: These guys are also doing something different. It has felt like a lot of different cancer organizations that we’ve been part of in the past, it’s the same old business. You don’t hear about these trials. CARE is doing things that haven’t been done before. Innovative ways of looking at things is how we’re going to get better. You can’t just keep doing things as usual.
Why would you encourage friends and family to get involved with CARE?
Greg: Well, we kind of did that this year. We brought several other couples with us to Beer & Bites this year who are longtime friends of ours from the teaching community and all of them have been touched by cancer in some way or another. They were very excited to a part of it and had a great evening with us. They were very surprised at the level of participation and how well run it was, and how fun it was.
Kaycie: I think people like the casualness of the event. It’s not a big black-tie event. Just to have everyone wear their jeans and everyone feels like they’re on the same page.
Greg: It’s grassroots and that’s what makes it cool. Not only do people want to participate in it financially, they want to be a part of it. It’s truly a community thing and has gotten bigger that way. The people that run it and the people that are behind it are there because they care. They’re not doing it because they want to be paid, they’re there because they want to donate their time and their money and to make the whole thing possible.
Kaycie: The one thing that we did tell our friends was, don’t feel pressured to do anything. Anything that you want to give is fine, don’t feel pressure. But once you get involved and you see all the people in the community, you’re like, why wouldn’t I want to get involved in this? At any level—it doesn’t matter what level. And that’s something else that I love about this is that when they do the paddle raise, it’s not all the way up at thousands of dollars, they go down in levels so that anybody can give at any level and that’s important.
Greg: We have businesses in the South Sound, deep friendships in the South Sound, this is where our lives are, and this is where we’re going to spend the rest of them, so I think it’s important to be part of the things going on down here. And there are a lot of things to get involved in, so you have to pick your battles and choose the things that are important to you and that you believe in.
Kaycie: We just want our community to continue to get better. Not just for ourselves but for our kids and our grandchildren.
Greg: Our family will always be behind Beer & Bites, and cancer research, and the South Sound CARE Foundation. Because it’s a horrible disease, because our friends started CARE, and because its affected our family so there are lots of reasons but to have something so dynamic that we can be involved in, and we know all the people behind it, it makes it super simple for us to want to be supportive and to continue to support the cause.